It's getting deep in here!

Earlier this year I joined forces with 10 other fantastic shop owners to create a group called Quilt Gallery Shops. We challenged each other to create a quilt and kit using a specific block for each issue of McCalls Quilting magazine. There are 6 issues of McCalls Quilting, I make far more than 6 quilts per year (ok, I have quilting help). This should not be a problem.

This group is made up of some pretty heavy hitters in the quilting world. Sandy Brawner, owner of Quilt Country in Texas has designed for Moda and is almost single handedly responsible for creating the rag quilting craze. Karen Snyder, owner of Anna Leana’s in Washington (state that is) is the author of “Bundles of Fun” (and very soon “More Bundles of Fun”) also designs fabrics for Andover. Jerry Stube in Kansas and Deb Luttrel in Texas both have amazing block-of-the-month programs. Mary Wilberg’s name appears on many patterns published in a variety of magazines…… and that is only half the group!

The first block was Martha Washington’s Star. Everyone had their quilt finished before the deadline, quilted, bound and photographed. The second was “any” basket block. My top was finished, but the quilting lines don’t show in the ad, so I photographed it before it was quilted and photographed it again for the pattern front. The third one was Corn and Beans. The photo was taken, but it still isn’t quilted (I’m thinking of adding borders to mine and the fabric hasn’t arrived. That is my story and I’m sticking to it!) The Jacobs Ladder project on the design wall in the photo is the next project and it needs to be completed by January 28th!

The mess on my sewing center is a small part of what I have to do something with before I can sew that piece together! Normally I would swoop all of that mess into a bin and hide it under the sewing center, but most of that mess has to have something done with it to meet deadlines BEFORE the 28th.

Did I mention that I have a 5 day trip to Florida planned? Yep, I’m leaving Friday morning for the sunshine state. I’ll be doing some teaching while I’m there, visiting family and looking at colleges with Lindsay. Too bad they haven’t perfected that cloning process, I sure could use a copy of “me” to stay home and get some work done!

If you want to see the entire selection of Quilt Gallery quilts, you can log on to the site at http://www.quiltgalleryshops.com/ .

Karen